Re: Ft. Ord burn lessons learned

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

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Submitted by Vienna Merritt Moore <vs3trees@sbcglobal.net>

LESSONS LEARNED?

We got our Fort Ord Community Bulletin with the Prescribed Burn Review
flashing "Lessons Learned from 2003 Prescribed Burns"

Omitted were lessons about listening to the community. Almost 1500
citizens, Spreckels School District, Sierra Club, Central Coast Alliance
on Health, HOPE- Helping Our Peninsula?s Environment, Monterey Bay
Toxics Project, Toxics Action Coalition, Save Our Air Resources, Life
2000, Carmel Valley Women?s Network, and more rejected the burning and
pleaded for a pre-action health assessment that would have clarified
risks and possibly extinguished the burn plan. Over 500 people hand
wrote letters to Congressman Sam Farr (D) asking for a health study in
the form of an Environmental Impact Statement before the helicopters
dropped napalm (alumagel) which ignited Fort Ord. Not only was the Army
deaf to the public but they ignored at least one very important
environmental law. The National Environmental Policy Act requires an
Environmental Impact Statement to be carried out on any federal action
that could have an environmental impact. The only way to get around this
is have a categorical exclusion, which requires proof that there will be
NO impact.

Lessons learned from the past? The Army wrote in 1994, "bombs and
projectiles ? will explode and send hot fragments some four thousand
feet (4,000) and will start secondary fires "with 100 percent
certainty!" How could this have been a controlled burn? I doubt that the
fire breaks were 4,000 feet wide.

NO Munitions-Related Contaminants in the air, the Army declared. Ever
seen such colors come off a forest fire? Expert on the impacts emissions
from ordnance have on human health and the environment and former
Division Chief for the EPA, Bill Mitchell clearly spelled out the
impossibility of monitoring air from the burns in his comments on the
Army?s Remedial Investigative Feasibility Study (RI/FS), and Burn Plan.
In addition Mitchell stated "the light-weight, sooty, black fluffy
particulate material produced by the burning ? will serve as perfect
hosts to transport the undestroyed or partially destroyed energetic
materials a great distance from the burn site before depositing it onto
surfaces. This contaminated particulate could be a very toxic material
in itself and be a short and long term hazard to those conducting the
UXO remediation after the burn and those living on the Monterey
peninsula." 

Workable, safe alternatives to burning exist. This fact, the facts above
and more were vacant from the Army?s Bulletin even though they were
repeated over and over to the Army, EPA, California Department of Toxic
Substance Control and our Congressman Sam Farr before the burning! 

"Lessons learned", I shook my head as I wondered if somebody had a
learning disability or if we the public were the ones that had a hard
lesson to learn.

For more information contact:
Vienna Merritt Moore
Founder
Say NO to Fort Ord TOXIC BURNINGS 
831-384-7658
E-mail: Vs3trees@sbcglobal.net

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